Reception for the Pariah

Vladimir Putin grinned broadly as the B-2 bombers thundered overhead - American stealth bombers, once designed to keep Moscow’s imperial ambitions in check, now formed the honor guard for a man wanted by the International Criminal Court on an arrest warrant. On August 15, 2025, Donald Trump not only rolled out the red carpet for the Russian president at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Alaska, but granted him something far more valuable: rehabilitation on the world stage, served with military honors and a warm handshake that lasted so long even Putin began to smirk.

Three and a half years after the start of his brutal war of aggression against Ukraine, while Russian rockets continued to rain down on Ukrainian marketplaces - that very morning one struck the market in Sumy - the Kremlin leader climbed into the armored presidential limousine alongside Trump. His own Aurus car, specially flown in from Moscow, stood abandoned on the tarmac. The symbolism could not have been clearer: This was not a war criminal being held to account, but a statesman being welcomed.

The price of the staging

Trump actually applauded as Putin walked across the asphalt. One has to picture this scene: the president of the United States applauding an autocrat whose troops have been systematically reducing Ukrainian cities to rubble since 2022, murdering civilians and abducting children to Russia - crimes for which the International Criminal Court issued the arrest warrant. When a reporter called out to Putin asking whether he would stop killing civilians, the Russian president merely grinned, pointed to his ear, and kept walking.

The joint ride in the “Beast”, as the presidential limousine is called, without an interpreter, fatally recalled those private conversations between Trump and Putin during his first term, the contents of which remain in the dark to this day. Putin speaks enough English for a conversation - whatever the two men discussed in those minutes, there were no witnesses, no records, only the word of two men, one of whom demonstrably treats the truth as a variable concept.

I want to see a ceasefire quickly,” Trump had declared on the flight to Alaska, with the impatience of a businessman eager to close a deal. “I will not be happy if it is not today.” As if the war, which has claimed tens of thousands of lives and uprooted millions, had been waiting for his personal satisfaction. The “very severe consequences” with which he threatened Putin in the event of failure rang hollow in view of the warm reception he gave the Russian president a few hours later.

Meanwhile, Volodymyr Zelensky sat in Kyiv, forced to watch as the fate of his country was negotiated without his presence. The Ukrainian president released a video message whose bitter irony was hard to surpass: while peace was being discussed in Alaska, Russian bombs were falling on Ukrainian cities. “On the day of negotiations they kill as well,” Zelensky said. “And that speaks volumes.”

It did indeed speak volumes - about Putin’s negotiating position from a position of strength, about his contempt for diplomatic protocol, and about Trump’s willingness to ignore it all. The Russian president came to Alaska with maximal demands: the cession of territories Russia does not even fully control, recognition of the illegally annexed Crimea, Ukraine’s renunciation of NATO membership, limits on its armed forces, and recognition of Russian as an official language. These were the demands of a conqueror, not a peacemaker.

Trump, for his part, remained vague in his usual manner. Land swaps could be discussed, he said, adding, “I have to let Ukraine make that decision.” A remarkable statement from someone who was in the process of negotiating over Ukrainian territory without Ukrainian participation. He hinted at the possibility of security guarantees for Ukraine, but “not in the form of NATO membership” - exactly the kind of vague assurances Putin ignored in 2022 when he sent in his tanks.

The talks, originally planned as a one-on-one, were at the last moment expanded to a six-person meeting. Foreign Minister Marco Rubio and Special Envoy Steve Witkoff flanked Trump, while Putin brought along his trusted lieutenants: Sergey Lavrov, the foreign minister who for years has downplayed Russian war crimes before the world, and Yuri Ushakov, the foreign policy adviser. Later, the finance minister and trade minister were to join - Putin had notably brought “many businesspeople,” as Trump approvingly remarked. “That is good,” said the American president. “They want to do business.”

In Anchorage itself, America’s divisions were on display. While several hundred demonstrators with Ukrainian flags marched through the streets, elsewhere Trump supporters gathered with American flags. Three retirees - Barbara Hood, Colleen Ray, and Linda Jamidlo - had spent two days sewing a huge flag reading “Alaska Stands With Ukraine.” They spread it out in Delaney Park, in the desperate hope Trump and Putin might see it on approach. A touching but futile gesture in light of the realpolitik playing out on the military base.

Senator Chris Murphy, Democrat from Connecticut, summed up the criticism: Putin stood next to the most powerful person in the world, “and that is basically Donald Trump signaling that all is forgiven.” The photo op alone legitimized war crimes. For Putin it was a triumphant moment - acceptance by the United States after three years of international ostracism.

The shadows of Helsinki 2018 hung heavily over this new summit. Back then, Trump had publicly placed Putin’s word above the findings of his own intelligence services and claimed he believed the Russian version over U.S. conclusions about interference in the 2016 election. The bipartisan outrage had been enormous. Now, seven years later, Trump seemed determined to repeat history - only this time it was not about election meddling but the fate of an entire country. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov had announced the talks could last six to seven hours. Six to seven hours in which borders drawn in blood were negotiated. Six to seven hours in which the “rules-based international order” that Western politicians like to invoke became a bargaining chip. Six to seven hours in which an American president helped a Russian warlord legitimize his conquests. As the F-22 fighter jets thundered over the two heads of state - ironically stationed on a base whose pilots have traditionally seen themselves as the first line of defense against Russian aggression - the perversion of the moment could not have been more glaring. The weapons America built to protect the free world now formed the backdrop for capitulation to an aggressor. Putin had every reason to grin.

The theater of humiliation

After two hours and forty-five minutes, Trump and Putin appeared before the world press - and what happened next was the final bankruptcy of journalistic integrity. As the two men entered the hall, the journalists present jumped up like teenagers at a pop concert. Had they brought sparklers, they would have lit them. Reporters turned around, took selfies with the two heads of state in the background, while Ukrainian children sat in bunkers waiting for the next air raid siren. It was a spectacle of shamelessness that dragged the already battered reputation of the profession further into the abyss.

Putin spoke first, with the practiced composure of a man who knew he had won. The talks had been “constructive and substantive,” he announced. “We have established good direct contacts with Mr. Trump.” Direct contacts - Kremlin-speak for: I got what I wanted. Trump nodded like a satisfied business partner after a successful deal.

“Extremely productive” was how Trump described the meeting, but there was no deal. Not yet. The contradiction in this statement seemed to escape him - or he simply did not care. How can a meeting be extremely productive if it produces no result? But Trump never claimed to have invented logic. He would get in touch with NATO leaders, he announced, without mentioning that they had been excluded from the meeting like unwanted relatives from a wedding.

Then came the moment that crowned the farce. Putin, in his best English, which he otherwise likes to hide behind a feigned language barrier, turned to Trump: “Next time in Moscow.” The next time in Moscow. One has to grasp the outrageousness of this invitation: the president of the United States was to travel to the capital of the aggressor, the city from which the order to destroy Ukrainian cities is given. And Trump? “I could see it possibly happening,” he replied with a smile. He could imagine it happening. No questions were allowed. The two men left the hall like business partners after a successful contract signing, while the journalists continued to review their selfies. Not a single reporter had the chance to ask about the dead in Sumy, about the abducted children, about the destroyed cities. Instead, they had reduced themselves to extras in Putin’s propaganda play. The “understanding” Putin spoke of remained nebulous - deliberately nebulous. Both men knew that vagueness was their best ally. As long as nothing concrete was announced, both sides could sell the meeting as a success. Trump could claim he was working on peace. Putin could run the images of his rehabilitation on American soil in a loop on Russian state media.

In the days leading up to the summit, Trump had repeatedly spoken of a second meeting, as if the war in Ukraine were a TV series that needed a second season. “The more important meeting will be the second meeting,” he had said, with Zelensky and “maybe” European leaders. Maybe. As if the Europeans, whose security was at stake, whose energy supplies Putin used as a weapon, were merely optional extras. But now Putin had taken over the direction. It was to be Moscow. In Putin’s capital, on Putin’s terms, in Putin’s staging. Zelensky would be faced with the choice: either travel to the capital of the aggressor and thereby legitimize Putin’s position, or stay away and be portrayed as a refuser of peace. A perfect trap, and Trump had walked right into it.

The nearly three hours Trump and Putin had spent behind closed doors would cast their shadows. Without a transcript, without witnesses other than their closest advisers, without any transparency, two men had negotiated over the fate of millions. What was promised? What deals were initiated? Which territories were bartered like real estate in one of Trump’s businesses? The answers would only emerge when it was too late. When the first Ukrainian territories were officially ceded. When Ukraine’s NATO membership was permanently off the table. When sanctions against Russia fell like dominoes. Then the world would understand what had really happened on that August day in Alaska: not the start of a peace process, but the capitulation of the West to a war criminal, staged as a diplomatic triumph and applauded by a press corps that had sold its own dignity for a selfie.

“Extremely productive” was how Trump had described the meeting. For Putin, that was certainly true. He had gotten the rehabilitation he sought, the recognition he craved, and the invitation to Moscow was the icing on this diplomatic coup. While people continued to die in Ukraine, while Zelensky in Kyiv waited for a call that might never come, Putin returned to Moscow as the man who had gotten the American president to dance to his tune. The B-2 bombers that had thundered overhead upon arrival could also have been symbols of a different policy - a policy of strength toward aggressors, of defending democratic values, of solidarity with the victims. Instead, they became the backdrop for a capitulation sold as diplomacy.

On that day in Alaska, it was not only Ukraine that was betrayed. Betrayed was the idea that aggression carries a price, that war crimes have consequences, that the power of law stands above the law of the strong.

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